them at an angle of forty-five degrees; but our brave mountaineers are clambering steadily on-up-upward still! And what do these men follow? Your heart gives a great bound when you think what it is, the regimental flag,- and, glancing along the front, count fifteen of those colors that were borne at Pea Ridge, waved at Shiloh, glorified at Stone River, riddled at Chickamauga. Three times the flag of the 27th Illinois goes down. And you know why. Three dead color sergeants lie just there; but the flag is immortal thank God! - and up it comes again, and the men move on. - I give a look at the sun behind me; it is not more than a handbreadth from the edge of the mountain. Oh, for the voice that could bid that sun stand still! I turn to the battle again. Those three flags have taken flight. They are upward bound! The race of the flags is growing every moment more terrible. The iron sledge beats on. Hearts, loyal and brave, are on the anvil all the way from base to summit of Mission Ridge, but those dreadful hammers never intermit. Things are growing desperate up aloft; the enemy tumble rocks upon the rising line; they light the fuses and roll shells down the steep; they load the guns with handfuls of cartridges in their haste; and, as if there were powder in the word, they shout "Chickamauga!" down upon the mountaineers. But all would not do, and just as the sun, weary of the scene, was sinking out of sight, with magnificent bursts all along the line, exactly as you have seen the crested seas leap up at the breakwater, the advance surged over the crest, and in a minute those flags fluttered along the fringe where fifty guns were kenneled. -Benjamin F. Taylor. A PLEA FOR CUBA On the twelfth of March, 1898, Senator John M. Thurston and his wife landed at the harbor of Matanzas to make an independent investigation of affairs in Cuba. Mrs. Thurston toiled day and night in behalf of the suffering Cubans until her strength sank beneath the strain, and the spirit of the noble woman passed away. Her last request was that her husband should not allow her death to delay his efforts in behalf of Cuban liberty. So, on the twenty-fourth of March, Mr. Thurston delivered the following speech before the United States Senate. Mr. President-I am here by command of silent lips to speak once and for all upon the Cuban situation. I trust that no one has expected anything sensational from me. God forbid that the bitterness of a personal loss should induce me to color in the slightest degree the statement that I feel it my duty to make. I shall endeavor to be honest, conservative, and just. I have no purpose to stir the public passion to any action not necessary and imperative to meet the duties and necessities of American responsibility, Christian humanity, and national honor. I would shirk this task if I could, but I dare not. I cannot satisfy my conscience except by speaking, and speaking now. I went to Cuba firmly believing that the condition of affairs there had been greatly exaggerated by the press, and my own efforts were directed in the first instance to the attempted exposure of these supposed exaggerations. There has undoubtedly been much sensationalism in the journalism of the time, but as to the condition of affairs in Cuba there has been no exaggeration, because exaggeration has been impossible. The pictures in the American newspapers of the starving reconcentrados are true. They can all be duplicated by the thousands. I never saw, and please God I may never again see, so deplorable a sight as the reconcentrados in the suburbs of Matanzas. I can never forget to my dying day the hopeless anguish in their despairing eyes. Huddled about their little bark huts, they raised no voice of appeal to us for alms as we went among them. Men, women, and children stand silent, famishing with hunger. They have no homes to return to; their fields have grown up to weeds; they have no oxen, no implements of husbandry with which to begin anew the cultivation of the soil. Their only hope is to remain where they are, to live as long as they can on any insufficient charity, and then die. The government of Spain will not appropriate one dollar to save these people. They are now being attended and nursed and administered to by the charity of the United States. Think of the spectacle! We are feeding these citizens of Spain; we are nursing the sick; we are saving such as can be saved, and yet there are those who still say it is right for us to send food, but we must keep hands off. I say that time has come when muskets ought to go with the food. We asked the governor if he knew of any relief for these people except through the charity of the United States. He did not. We asked him, "When do you think the time will come that these people can be placed in a position of self-support?" He replied to us, with deep feeling, "Only the good God, or the great government of the United States can answer that question." I hope and believe that the good God by the great government of the United States will answer that question. Spain is powerless to end the conflict, to rehabilitate the island, or to relieve the suffering, starvation, and distress. The time for action then has come. No greater reason for it can exist to-morrow than exists to-day. Every hour's delay only adds another chapter to the awful story of misery and death. Only one Power can intervene. the United States of America. Ours is the one great nation of the New World, the mother of American republics. She holds a position of trust and responsibility toward the peoples of the whole Western Hemisphere. It was her glorious example which inspired the patriots of Cuba to raise the flag of liberty in her eternal hills. We cannot refuse to accept this responsibility which the God of the universe has placed upon us as the one great power in the New World. We must act! What shall our action be? Some say, The acknowledgment of the belligerency of the revolutionists. The hour and the opportunity for that have passed away. Others say, Let us by resolution or official proclamation recognize the independence of the Cubans. It is too late even for such recognition to be of great avail. Others say, Annexation to the United States. God forbid! I would oppose annexation with my latest breath. The people of Cuba are not our people: they cannot assimilate with us. Let the world understand that the United States does not propose to annex Cuba, that it is not seeking a foot of Cuban soil or a dollar of Spanish treasure. There is only one action possible, if any is taken; that is, intervention for the independence of the island; intervention that means the landing of an American army on Cuban soil, the deploying of an American fleet off Havana; intervention which says to Spain, Leave the island, withdraw your soldiers, leave the Cubans, these brothers of ours, to form and carry on a government for themselves. Against the intervention of the United States in this holy cause there is but one voice of dissent; that voice is the voice of the money-changers. They fear war! Not because of any Christian or ennobling sentiment against war and in favor of peace, but because they fear that declaration of war, or the intervention which might result in war, would have a depressing effect upon the stock market. Let them go. They do not represent American sentiment; they do not represent American patriotism. Let them take their chances as they can. Their weal or woe is of but little importance to the liberty-loving people of the United States. They will not do the fighting; their blood will not flow; they will keep on dealing in options on human life. Let the men whose loyalty is to the dollar stand aside while the men whose loyalty is to the flag come to the front. Mr. President, there are those who say that the affairs of Cuba are not the affairs of the United States, who insist that we can stand idly by and see that island devastated and depopulated, its business interests destroyed, its commercial intercourse with us cut off, its people starved, degraded, and enslaved. It may be the naked legal right of the United States to stand thus idly by. I have the legal right to pass along the street and see a helpless dog stamped into the earth under the heels of a ruffian. I can pass by and say that is not my dog. I can sit in my comfortable parlor with my loved ones gathered about me, and through my plateglass window see a fiend outrage a helpless woman near by, and I can legally say this is no affair of mine - it is not happening on my premises; and I can turn away and take my little ones in my arms, and, with the memory of their sainted mother in my heart, look up to the motto on the wall and read, "God bless our home.” But if I do it I am a coward and a cur, unfit to live, and God knows, unfit to die. And yet I cannot protect the dog or save the woman without the exercise of force. We cannot intervene and save Cuba without the exercise of force, and force means war: war means blood. The lowly Nazarene on the shores of Galilee preached the divine doctrine of love, "Peace on earth, good will toward men." Not peace on earth at the expense of liberty and humanity. Not good will toward men who despoil, enslave, degrade, and starve to death their fellow men. I believe in the doctrine of peace; but, men must have liberty before there can come abiding peace. When has a battle for humanity and liberty ever been won except by force? What barricade of wrong, injustice, and oppression has ever been carried except by force? Force compelled the signature of unwilling royalty to the great Magna Charta; force put life into the Declaration of Independence and made effective the Emancipation Proclamation; force beat with naked hands upon the iron gateway of the Bastile and made reprisal in one awful hour for centuries of kingly crime; force waved the flag of revolution over Bunker Hill and marked the snows of Valley Forge with blood-stained feet; force held the broken line at Shiloh, climbed the flame-swept hill at Chattanooga and stormed the clouds on Lookout Heights; force marched with Sherman to the sea, rode with Sheridan in the valley of the Shenandoah, and gave Grant victory at Appomattox; force saved the Union, kept the stars in the flag, made "niggers" men. The time for God's force has come again. Let the impassioned lips of American patriots once more take up the song: "In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea, Others may hesitate, others may procrastinate, others may plead for further diplomatic negotiation, which means delay, but for me, I am ready to act now, and for my action I am ready to answer to my conscience, my country, and my God. Mr. President, in the cable that moored me to life and hope the strongest strands are broken. I have but little left to offer at the altar of Freedom's sacrifice, but all I have I am glad to give. I am ready to serve my country as best I can in the Senate or in the field. My dearest wish, my most earnest prayer to God is this, that when death comes to end all, I may meet it calmly and fearlessly as did my beloved, in the cause of humanity, under the American flag. "There was a South of slavery and secession that South is dead. There is a South of union and freedom that South, thank God, is living, breathing, growing every hour." These words delivered from the immortal lips of Benjamin H. Hill, at Tammany Hall, in 1866, true then, and truer now, I shall make my text to-night. In speaking to the toast with which you have honored me, I accept the term, "The New South," as in no sense disparaging to the old. Dear to me, sir, is the home of my childhood, and |